The Primal Hunter

Jake had wanted to just focus on making a Grimoire. He truly had. The problem was that he couldn’t just do as he usually did and experiment until he pumped something good out for one simple reason he had kind of forgotten, even if it was expressly mentioned in the skill description. It was only when Jake tried to craft one he brought up the skill description again and was reminded.

[Grimoire of the Heretic-Chosen (Unique)] – Expand your Path and allow others to walk in your footsteps. Allows the Heretic-Chosen to craft a Grimoire related to his Path, allowing another of the enlightened races to consume it, granting them either a class or profession. The nature of the Grimoire depends on a multitude of factors, including crafting ingredients, the will of the creator, and several unknowns. Requirements to use the Grimoire vary. A cooldown period is required between each crafting attempt, and a longer cooldown is triggered after a successful Grimoire craft. Due to your unique Path, every Grimoire created will be more potent by default and receive additional Records based on all your stats.

A cooldown period. Yeah, that one definitely threw a spanner into the works. To make matters worse, the failed Grimoire Jake had tried to make while experimenting just turned into ash, wasting all of the materials. Materials that were in no way cheap at the Merit Point Exchange, as stronger Paths required better base ingredients, and Jake felt fairly confident the reason he failed the first time around was due to his attempt to cheap out.

The cooldown period wasn’t even short. It was an entire damn month, even if Jake failed, making him wonder if it wouldn’t be over a year when he succeeded. The only good thing was that the Records Jake tried to pour into the Grimoire were fully refunded even when he failed the crafting attempt, so nothing besides the ingredients was wasted.

On that note, Jake read in the books that the good thing about Grimoires was that the Records gained from crafting one always equaled out with those poured into it, meaning one never truly lost anything. It could still easily turn into a bad investment as making a Grimoire wasn’t cheap, and some jackass could get and waste the evolution granted, but luckily that wasn’t of any concern to Jake, considering he would just give the final product to the Architect.

Anyway, with the longer cooldown, should he succeed, he would likely only have one real shot, though, so he had to be careful.

With Grimoire-crafting temporarily shelved due to cooldown-related delays, Jake focused on other projects he also needed to get done. One of them was naturally the entire Temlat matter, but things had gone a lot more smoothly there than Jake had initially anticipated. He had sought out Jake only three days after he got back with a significantly better demeanor than before.

After some rest and reflection, he even seemed thankful for the experience in the centaur world. He had learned he had abilities he didn’t even know about and applications of curse energy he hadn’t ever considered. Jake wanted to hear more as he got Temlat to explain what had happened inside of the centaur world more in-depth and what the young half-elf had discovered.

“I always thought of my curse energy as just another kind of energy to kill with, a way to improve my destructive power. That it was the essence of my own hatred toward others… but I never really considered how much it can affect others outside of combat. I did know it made my opponent more reckless when we fought, but they obviously knew that was due to the curse and would work to eliminate it once the fight was over,” Temlat explained as Jake encouraged him to continue.

“But… one day, in that world, I killed a centaur hunter who spotted and tried to hunt me down. We ended up fighting, and I won in the end, killing him. Right after, I heard its allies nearby and ran to hide just in time for them to find the corpse of their friend. I saw their rage and anger as they picked up the corpse and brought it back to a small temporary camp they had made nearby. That is when I noticed the curse energy on the corpse still seeping out and influencing the centaurs and their own anger. What’s more, none of them made any efforts to eliminate it, almost as if they didn’t even notice.

“Following them to their temporary camp, I saw them have heated discussions. I don’t know what they were saying, but I felt something I hadn’t ever imagined. My curse energy within them was growing despite me doing nothing. They fueled it all by themselves. I knew that if I did something, they would notice, so I just kept watching. A few hours later, the hunters decided to head back to their main encampment, and on their way, they encountered a pretty powerful beast. Even if they won, you could see how frustrated they were with one another. Every minor mistake was scrutinized, and by the time they returned home, they clearly hated each other.

curse within one of the three disappeared. I was afraid they had discovered the curse and would all

it wasn’t Jake’s style, he wasn’t going to judge Temlat for how he achieved things. He did things the best he could, and it was indisputable that Temlat would

spread the curse slowly through the encampment by killing some of their hunters and even once threw a head into the

Their hatred of this unknown enemy who killed their kin and even sometimes burned down their homes was truly staggering, and he didn’t plan on giving them any outlet. Temlat

saw his chance and “ignited” much of the curse energy in the camp all at once during what he viewed as a huge and very heated town square meeting. Maybe some of them noticed something

upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the

get to the platform on top of a small rocky hill

he expected. The C-grade Centaur Warlord, who had otherwise barely shown itself, came out at that very moment to quell the conflict and,

flew up to the rocky platform as the Centaur Warlord chased, and those around it attacked with ranged weapons. That was partly how Temlat had gotten so injured, as

edge when Jake walked in. He had nearly just died and was – for lack of a better word – in shock.

had reached his own conclusions when it came to a different kind of Path he wanted to take. Rather than someone who used his curse energy as a destructive force with his black flames, he wanted to be far more of a schemer. A far more classical curse user, if you may. This was a Path Jake was definitely not qualified to give any advice on, so he could only encourage his student to do whatever

have one piece of advice he wanted to give,

person do you want to be, and what Path do you want to take? While your curse is the source of your power, do not let it be

Temlat would gladly shoot himself through the chest to hit the ones he hated in the head. And while that could work, Jake wasn’t sure

have a question…

as the curse energy Temlat had would be totally useable even in poisons, unlike Jake’s, as long as he made the mix right. The problem was that Jake doubted the half-elf could make anything useful even if he had a couple of years. He didn’t have any alchemy experience, after all, and with usual

one book he had stumbled upon when doing his own research. However, he quickly discarded it after reading in the introduction that his Sin Curse wouldn’t be compatible with most of the methods discussed within. Looking at the stack of books nearby, Jake sent out a string of

Based On Practical Demonstrations of the Malefic

times Villy liked to show off way back in the day. Jake did remember that the book mentioned that the Sin Curse

book, and he pointed to a stack of books off to the side of the big pile. “There are about thirty